


Sunday in the Park with Raffles

by unwillingadventurer



Category: Raffles - E. W. Hornung
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-18
Updated: 2018-04-18
Packaged: 2019-04-24 14:44:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14357643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unwillingadventurer/pseuds/unwillingadventurer
Summary: Bunny is delighted when Raffles suggests they have a picnic together in the park.





	Sunday in the Park with Raffles

It was with great surprise one sunny day in late summer that Raffles decided to organise a picnic for the two of us in the park. We rarely had the opportunity to venture out in the daytime where all the world could see us so I relished the idea and Raffles was alight with a certain joy I hadn’t seen in a long time. I didn’t know what the picnic idea was in aid of but I admit I did not care as long as Raffles was happy. 

Our landlady at the request of her favourite man, the wonderful Ralph who I knew as Raffles, filled the wicker picnic hamper full of his favourite delicacies and a selection of fruit, cakes, fine cheeses and even a bottle of vintage wine. Raffles secured the hamper to the front of his bicycle and I secured the patterned blanket and off we rode like two excited schoolboys on their first cycling outing.

We reached the park by midday and the sun was furiously beating down upon us in the clear blue sky. I was not a sun worshipper so suggested we found a tree for shade and Raffles pointed out the largest oak which stood majestically opposite the bandstand. There was a band playing and children running across the green with their exasperated parents or nannies chasing them. There were young ladies pushing perambulators, and courting couples finding their own tree to shade them from prying eyes.

“Well tuck in, my rabbit,” Raffles said.

And I could see Raffles had already opened the hamper and sampled some cheese and crackers. I obliged and was about to choose something when he decided it was the wrong choice and handed me the cheese and crackers instead. “No, try this. If you are to eat al fresco then you have to do it right, my boy.”

It was easier to nod and agree and I hate to admit but he was right and that the camembert cracker combination was delicious. I was even more pleased when he opened the wine and poured it into two small glasses. I took a sip and the rich plummy taste tickled my taste-buds. I savoured it in the same way I savoured this story.

“Quite spectacular, A.J,” I said, letting out a pleasurable sigh.

And now I wasn’t sure if I was talking about him or the wine as I watched him remove his blazer and stretch his long legs across the blanket. He leaned back against the oak as if not a care in the world. His white hair ever so slightly moved in the gentle breeze and his eyes were obscured by tinted spectacles. I could have quite simply watched him all day. I shuffled closer to his fine form, leaning my own content body back against the oak tree behind us. 

Raffles laughed. “A mighty oak is broad enough for we two.”

“Yes, quite. I often think about trees of this majesty. How long those roots have been around under the Earth.”

“Roots take many years to grow and once they do there’s no stopping them.”

“Its an old tree,” was all I managed to say.

“Yes Bunny, very old. Old age is something that alludes me I’m afraid for I don’t expect I shall reach it.”

“Don’t say that A.J!”

He slapped my knee. “Sorry old Rabbit, is it too gloomy a picture? Perhaps a change of subject?”

I was very eager to change the subject from Raffles’ premonition of us not reaching our twilight years together. I couldn’t bear to think of it and in honesty I’d learnt not to think too far into the future. Living the lives we did, it was almost insanity to plan ahead more than a few weeks for almost anything could happen to change our circumstances.

“It’s unlike you to plan a picnic,” I said suddenly. 

Raffles took a sip of his wine and sighed. “It was quite simply that we have had barely any time to enjoy this splendidly hot summer. I thought we should take advantage of it in case this…”

I cut him off. “In case this is our last one together?”

“No, my dear Bunny, how you do worry so! I simply meant that the next summer could be awash with rain and storms or perhaps snow in June. You never know with our dear England!”

I laughed. “No, you don’t.”

“The truth is you deserve a pleasant outing for the many you missed whilst you were cast away in the vileness of Wormwood Scrubs.”

That was true enough but I dared not think about those darkest days of my life. I certainly never shared them too closely with Raffles.

“Well in that case, a toast to us,” I said, raising my glass. 

He raised his glass too. “To us!” he repeated. “And to the sun before it sets.”

I mumbled the words of his toast, still not ready to say anything that would sound as though he might leave me one day. I was soon woken from my dreamlike melancholy by an irritating noise. I swatted my hands about my person. “Infernal buzzing!” I moaned as a rather plump well-set bumblebee circled me twice.

“He thinks you’re a flower one suspects,” quipped Raffles.

“He’s a nuisance. He’ll go for the jam if we’re not careful.” I swatted again, I admit rather dramatically.

Raffles found this amusing. “Be careful, Bunny, they do sting you know?”

“Only if he wants to die.”

“Well one might like the chance to sting for an honourable death, my dear rabbit.”

There he was again, riddles and speeches, always leading one way, towards an end for him, towards some blaze of glory. 

“This bee is taunting me.”

“My dear fellow!” Raffles was laughing at me as my arm swatted in the air in more grandiose dramatics. Finally, with a flourish of my hands, the bee grew bored and flew away to pollinate someone else.

“Phew!” I said and then resumed eating my jam sandwich with enthusiasm. It had only gone a few moments when I could see that Raffles was smirking, a curved smile spread across his devilish face. “What is it, prey?”

“Oh, my dear, dear Bunny,” Raffles said in the most babyish patronising voice I think I’d ever heard him utter. “You have just about the sweetest dollop of strawberry jam on your nose. Not quite sure how you got it there, it’s so far from your mouth, but it does rather match your rosy complexion.”

My cheeks were definitely rosy at that moment as I felt them burning with shame. I tried to wipe the sticky substance off my nose but Raffles pointed out that I’d missed a spot. Finally, with a sigh he gave in.

“Honestly my rabbit, must I do everything?”

Why was that always said by people who were usually the idlest? Raffles may have been an expert burglar but I was the one who did all the fetching and carrying! 

He leaned toward me with a handkerchief and he gently wiped the jam from my nose. He smiled as he did it and our eyes met, not daring to look away. It was a blasted trumpet that parted us first, followed by a cacophony of instruments, children, and ducks quaking. The marching band passed us by like a whirlwind and that really took the darn biscuit. I was enjoying myself until the blasted interruption. 

Why was it so impossible to find a moment’s peace where I could be in the company of the one I loved most?

We both attempted to speak three or four times then, each time thwarted by a clash of cymbals, the beat of a drum, the whistle of a flute. Finally, it passed and with it so did the afternoon in a blur. They say time flies when you’re having fun and nothing was truer of that day that sped by as though time had been accelerated. It was the rain that finally drew the day to a close and had us underneath the bandstand to keep dry. How the rain had begun to fall so rapidly was a mystery but I wondered whether the discussion Raffles and I had had about one of our crimes had unleashed the wrath of the gods of the weather.

We huddled together under the now vacant bandstand and watched the rain fall around us, drowning the grass and flowers in its wake. How so suddenly things can change. 

“I think we should head home, A.J.”

“We will as soon as it dies down a little. Unless you fancy a swim back to the cottage?”

“No I don’t!” I wasn’t so much a swimmer as Raffles. I also didn’t fancy riding our bicycles in the downpour but we had little choice when the rain decided to persist and hadn’t gone in the hour we spent standing there. 

In that hour we had entertained ourselves by singing, or rather humming along to a tune the band had played hours earlier and had been stuck in my head ever since. Raffles waved his arms in the air and moved his walking stick like a conductor. That was Raffles, ever the leading man, conducting the rest of us to do what he wanted.

“We should brave the beast, Bunny,” he finally said.

“I think you’re right.”

There was much complaining from the both of us as we tried to get comfortable on two wet bicycle saddles and we set off through deep and muddy puddles. When we reached the road, the puddles were everywhere and we rode through them, splashing everything around us without a sudden care in the world. 

When we arrived home, our landlady was beside herself with worry and waiting with an anxious frown painted across her face. She looked at our muddied clothes and tutted. “You both could have caught your deaths!” 

“Not to worry,” Raffles said, putting his arm around her shoulder, “we are quite well. Just a little wet, that’s all. Once we’ve had hot baths and some supper in our bellies, we shall be quite recovered.”

Our landlady smiled. “Right you are, off to the bathtub then Ralph, and then you, young man.” She directed the last part at me and tutted again as I removed my muddy shoes. “Did you have a nice picnic before the rain started?”

“It was a perfect day,” I said, watching as Raffles made his way upstairs. 

When we’d had our baths and our landlady had fed us, we adjourned to the living room and drank some whiskey and smoked Sullivan’s. 

Raffles took a long drag from his cigarette. “This is the life isn’t it Bunny?” Though I suspected he was talking specifically about the finer things that money could buy.

I meant his company. “It’s a life I like very much, A.J.” 

And it was. I’d have been quite content to live a life like that forever. If only Raffles had felt the same.


End file.
